We are proud to announce the release of GNU Classpath 0.97 "I Aten't Dead"

GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create
free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools
for the java programming language.

The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed
at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development
platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the
developer snapshots as a base for future versions. More projects based
on GNU Classpath:
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/stories.html

Again, this release is primarily a maintenance release. The recent release of the
majority of Sun's class library as Free Software on May the 8th, 2007, under the
auspices of the OpenJDK project (
http://openjdk.java.net
)
has changed the position of GNU Classpath within the community and recent efforts
have focused on bringing together Classpath and OpenJDK code under the umbrella of
IcedTea (
http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page
) and
BrandWeg (
http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/BrandWeg
). We hope to
extend support and work together with the OpenJDK community over time.

The main feature of this release is major changes to Classpath's build
system. Notably, configure now tries to find ecj, javac and gcj (in that
order), with the --with-ecj and --with-javac options being removed. To
override this, set JAVAC when calling configure. This brings the use of
the Java compiler in line with that of the C and C++ compilers. Building
also now requires a version of javah so that headers may be generated.

With the 0.95 release, we switched fully towards the 1.5 generics work
that we previously released separately as classpath-generics. All this work
is now fully integrated in the main release and various runtimes (gcj,
cacao, jamvm, ikvm, etc) have been extended to take advantage of the
new generics, annotations and enumeration support in the core
library. As a consequence, only 1.5 capable compilers (currently the Eclipse
Compiler for Java (ecj) and Sun's javac) may be used to build Classpath.

The GNU Classpath developers site
http://developer.classpath.org/
provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU
Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library
packages currently provided.

For each snapshot release generated documentation is provided through
the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc project. A documentation generation
framework for java source files used by the GNU project. Full
documentation on the currently implementated packages and classes can
be found at:
http://developer.classpath.org/doc/
We are looking into how to extend the documentation experience in the
future. Please contact the mailinglist if you would like to help with
this effort.

We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers! In
addition, we'd like to extend our thanks to all those who've contributed over
the years and have helped in building a thriving and friendly community
around the GNU Classpath project.